Jane
Woodward (M.S. '83, M.B.A. '87), chief executive
officer of investment firm Mineral Acquisition
Partners (MAP), and Mike Ming (B.S. '80, M.S. '87), a
managing member of K. Stewart Energy Group, have
created the MAP/Ming Visiting Professorship on Energy
and the Environment. Its first awardee is Joel
Swisher of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who has more
than 20 years' experience in research and consulting
about clean energy technology.

"We
are excited about the opportunities offered by the
MAP/Ming endowment to bring leading energy experts to
Stanford University," wrote School of
Engineering Dean Jim Plummer and former School of
Earth Sciences Dean Franklin Orr in a letter
welcoming Swisher to Stanford. "We are confident
that your presence on campus will not only make a
huge difference to our students, but also to our
emerging initiative in energy and the
environment."

Woodward
and Ming say their careers in energy were inspired by
Stanford teachers, especially the late Professor A.
J. Horn, a self-described "energy awareness
evangelist" who pointed out the pitfalls of
America's dependence on petroleum and pointed to
conservation and diversification of energy sources as
part of the solution. A veteran Standard Oil
(Chevron) engineer and member of Stanford's Class of
'39, his courses in the School of Earth Sciences drew
more than 5,000 students over the years.

"A.
J. was passionate about teaching so that students
would be informed citizens in whatever they
did," says Woodward, who also serves as a
consulting associate professor for Stanford's School
of Engineering.

"He
taught us that energy was far more than imported
oil," adds Ming, who serves on the Petroleum
Investments Committee managing energy investments for
the School of Earth Sciences. "Energy comes from
nuclear reactors, geothermal power, windmills -- all
far more intricate than the single source I
originally intended to study."

Woodward
first studied with Horn in 1980 as a graduate student
in the School of Earth Sciences, then served as his
teaching assistant. She went on to Stanford's
Graduate School of Business and later founded Palo
Alto-based MAP, which manages more than $130 million
in limited partnerships, mostly in natural gas. She
has taught in the School of Earth Sciences and in the
School of Engineering since 1990.

As
Woodward teaches her students these days, the process
of turning energy resources into energy services --
"like cold beers and hot showers" -- can
have hidden costs. More than 50 percent of U.S.
electricity comes from coal, she notes, but plants
convert only 35 percent of the coal's energy into
electricity, and light bulbs convert only 5 percent
of that into light. Similarly, cars capture less than
15 percent of the energy in gasoline. And that's
without considering the environmental impact of
extracting and burning those fuels.

Ming,
who worked in the Texas oil fields during high school
and college summers, first encountered Horn as an
undergraduate in the School of Earth Sciences in 1978
and also became his teaching assistant. He later
worked for Chevron before returning to the School of
Engineering in 1986 to earn a master's degree. Then
he headed "back to the rigs" in Oklahoma,
where he eventually co-founded K. Stewart Energy.

"Stanford
and this country have an obligation to the world to
advance the research and learning in this area,
because the consequences are huge," he says.

Woodward
and Ming met during their graduate studies and became
close friends over the years. Both also remained
close to Horn and his wife, Ruth, and shared another
inspiring mentor as well: Professor Gil Masters, who
taught in the School of Engineering.

Ming was drawn by Masters'
focus on alternative energy and new technologies: "I was probably
the only petroleum engineer in Gil's class on small-scale energy systems
studying how to build an energy-self-sufficient home." Woodward
became Masters' faculty colleague. "I wouldn't have taught all
these years without being able to lean on Gil's experience and wisdom
and build on his history of teaching energy classes," she says.

Leveraging
a legacy

In 1999,
Horn passed away. In 2001, Masters retired. The two
had guided thousands of students into the study of
energy and nurtured Stanford's programs in the field.
Masters' courses had become mainstays of the new
interdisciplinary major for undergraduates called
Earth Systems, which offers a track in energy among
several environmental specialties.

Ming and
his wife, Diane, a chemical engineering major in the
Class of '81 who also studied with Horn, contributed
to the endowment that supports the Earth Systems
Program. Woodward had helped to establish the A. J.
and Ruth Horn Lectureship on Energy, and her firm had
created a fellowship program to place Stanford
graduate students in nongovernmental organizations
working on energy issues. At a symposium honoring
Masters in 2001, they decided to combine forces by
creating a professorship that combines disciplines.

The
MAP/Ming Visiting Professor on Energy and the
Environment will serve jointly in Stanford's School
of Engineering and School of Earth Sciences for an
academic year. Over the initial five-year term of the
gift, appointees will add course offerings in energy
for undergraduate and graduate students across the
campus. Swisher, for example, will deliver a Winter
Quarter lecture series on greenhouse-gas management
and a Spring Quarter course on greenhouse-gas
migration strategies. The post also will provide
Stanford faculty with a series of expert colleagues
and help to recruit new permanent faculty.

Swisher earned both of
his graduate degrees -- a 1980 master's degree in mechanical engineering
and a 1991 doctorate in civil engineering ­ from Stanford. He is an
internationally renowned expert in the analysis, design and evaluation
of building energy systems, utility energy efficiency, distributed generation
and emission reduction programs, and the development and finance of
carbon offset projects. His consulting clients include several corporations,
electric utilities and European governments, the Electric Power Research
Institute, the United Nations Environment Programme and multilateral
financial institutions including the World Bank.

Derek
Rosenfield is a writer in Stanford's Office of
Development. Dawn Levy contributed to this report.